The Inner Voice of Criticism

06 Oct The Inner Voice of Criticism

One focal issue that seems to arise out of many Psychotherapy client sessions is that of the voice of criticism. When this voice is heard, it is important to understand that it is not associated with Schizophrenia or Psychosis in this article; however it is a thought process of negative thinking and emotions that creates a huge amount of noise in the conscious part of the mind.

"This Inner Critic came as a result of childhood wounds and generally resulted from some authority type figure, whether parents, teachers, religious authority or government institutions. The message that the child picked up was one of having done something wrong and as a result there was some sort of criticism placed on the child. The interesting thing about the dynamics is the authority figures were just as fallible (had authority who judged them too), yet the child is too young to rationalize this and look at the macro rather than the micro dynamics of the situation."

Since the rational side is not as strongly developed yet, the Critical Voice becomes a defense mechanism designed to protect the child from further wounds and in effect becomes like a military leader who creates a preemptive strike against an enemy in order to keep safe from further harm. The idea of the strike is to make sure that there is no fear of failure, abandonment issues or the sense of not being loved enough by those who were meant to keep us safe and secure.

The childlike wounded energy has no conceptualization of the adult world as we know it and the emotions become deeply entrenched in a web of defenses that can only be understood and broken down by a professional trained to deal with this rather large and judging voice.

This is where Lynton Friedman, the therapist at Sanlyn Wellness comes into play. There are a number of tools that can be administered to get the child to understand that there is an adult part and integrate them together. One such method is doing what we call Voice Dialoguing with the Inner Critic using a Felt Sense. This method entails creating a feeling of the body releasing the stored negative emotions by getting the client to focus on a series of directive questions while at the same time creating a visual or feeling of this Critic by imagining that there is a creative side to them and bringing this energy to life in order to let the child understand that the adult part of them is in charge in a positive manner as opposed to negative analyzing.

If this method interests you or you are looking to explore more ways to understanding why you are so critical of yourself, call or email Sanlyn Wellness to book a session and set yourself free of all the associated thoughts related to the criticism and perfectionism.